Is Breaking Bad Darwinian?

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Jag Bhalla is an entrepreneur and writer. His current project is Errors We Live By, a series of short exoteric essays exposing errors in the big ideas running our lives, details at www.errorsweliveby.comwww.errorsweliveby.com. His last book was I'm Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears, a surreptitious science gift book from National Geographic Books, details at www.hangingnoodles.comwww.hangingnoodles.com. It explains his twitter handle @hangingnoodles Follow on Twitter @hangingnoodles.

“Darwin was no Darwinian.” Martin Luther King Jr said that before me. He was correct historically, scientifically, and morally. It’s a bad break for Darwin, and us, that his name is used to distort his ideas. Particularly as applied to humans. And TV shows.

Breaking Bad‘s success rests on its moral complexities. They remind us that good stories are thought experiments in morals or social rules which often yield multiple interpretations. Calling morals social-rules evades old baggage, since surely social-rules can be studied scientifically. But science’s stories can also have multiple interpretations. Evolution isn’t as simple as “red in tooth and claw” sound bite peddlers suggest.

The specious origin of what’s called “Darwinian” is Herbert Spencer, coiner of “survival of the fittest.” It descends to us via Dawkinsian selfish-genery. But Dawkins’ logic is flawed. Nature contains competition. But also cooperation. The mix is key, especially in social species.

The largest study of hunter-gatherer tribal rules shows that team survival has likely shaped our evolution, and social rules, for 10,000 generations. All extant hunter-gatherers limit group-threatening behaviors, including harmful competition. There are two types of social rules: Those that prevent groups from damaging what they depend on. And those that don’t. Guess which are fitter?

Darwin’s rich ideas and name are being misused. Competition in nature regularly creates waste and catastrophe. It can in markets, which if unguided can be as dumb as trees. Our evolved capacities for reason, foresight, and social coordination can help us avoid predictable disaster.

This aspect of nature has crystal clear methods. Her logic ultimately tends to eliminate all that damages what it depends on. We’d better get stories about this into every human heart and head.

Illustration by Julia Suits, The New Yorker Cartoonist & author of The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions.

About the Author: Jag Bhalla is an entrepreneur and writer. His current project is Errors We Live By, a series of short exoteric essays exposing errors in the big ideas running our lives, details at www.errorsweliveby.comwww.errorsweliveby.com. His last book was I'm Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears, a surreptitious science gift book from National Geographic Books, details at www.hangingnoodles.comwww.hangingnoodles.com. It explains his twitter handle @hangingnoodles Follow on Twitter @hangingnoodles.

You mean, it’s only the groups that didn’t impose such limits developed beyond this primitive form of social organization? Looks like a pretty strong argument against imposing such, especially since we know what happens to hunter-gatherers after a contact with a more developed society.